Honour for Bayelsa Govt House Chaplain

The Newlife Theological Seminary, North Carolina, the United States of America (USA), has awarded an honorary Doctorate Degree of Philosophy to the Chaplain of the Gloryland Chapel, Bayelsa State Government House, Bishop Dotimi Egbegi.

The honour, which was conferred on Egbegi by Dr. James Watford, formed one of the highlights of activities making the summit organised in Yenagoa, the state capital, by the International Congress for Rural Evangelism (iCORE).

Clergymen from around the world, who attended the summit, were iCORE International Director, Bishop James Watford; Apostle Earl Newton from the USA, Evangelist Annie from Canada, Dr. Assiongbonvi Ayite from Ghana and Bishop A. D. Otong from Nigeria.

Renowned pastors and church workers also attended the summit entitled “Activating Disciples”, at the Graceworld Heritage Tabernacle International, Opolo. The Convener, Apostle Saturday Mark, said Bishop Egbegi merited the award.

He said: “When we came into Bayelsa, we carried out a research and spoke to people. We wanted to know a clergy man with exceptional qualities. Almost everybody we spoke to mentioned Egbegi.

“We have not interacted with him personally but with the testimonies of ministers around here who have worked with us, we know that Bishop Egbegi is the choice and we picked him for this award.

“We believe that with him, we will continue to reach out to other ministers who are still maintaining the integrity of the Gospel”.

In his response, Egbegi described the award as a great honour to him, even as he added that he has been motivated to do more.

He said: “If you don’t impact on lives, your usefulness on earth will not be felt. It is when you impact on the lives of men, particularly men who cannot pay you back that your influence and impact is felt on earth.

“It is a great motivation to improve myself and to influence and better the society better and mentor others to be great in society and for eternity”.

Earlier, Mark, who spoke on the “Battle of the Woods” said iCORE was founded to sustain sensitisation and mobilisation of disciples. He referred to the woods as far-flung creeks, villages and communities.

He said such drive would stop people in such areas from depending on superstitions, deities and other unwholesome traditional practices.

He said: “We are involved in the great commission with a specific definition of discipleship. iCORE is built on a four-leg objective of rural evangelism and development, discipleship, leadership training and prayer for world revival.

“We believe that the world goes where the leaders go. The church also goes where the leaders go and if the leaders are affected, the church will be affected; the nation will be affected. And so we bring in pastors and church workers to train.

“We emphasise discipleship on a personal level, most importantly rural evangelism. Everyone wants to go to the city. Everyone wants to go to Abuja. Everyone wants to go to Lagos and we neglect the rural communities and the people there are left in darkness.

“While the government is talking about rural electrification, iCORE is talking about rural evangelisation; bringing the people to Christ and breaking the chains of darkness”.

In his remarks, Watford said commitment to prayer and training were the three ingredients to create evangelistic programme in local churches. He stressed that evangelism was not recruitment.

“Without that message, there is no evangelism since there is no good news. Evangelism is transcultural and universal and goes throughout every era of time.

“We should be thankful; the message of evangelism never changes. We should pray that we will always be sensitive to the changing methods so that many people will have the opportunity to hear the good news”, he said.